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AmblesideOnline: Quotes from Charlotte Mason's Volumes about Poetry

from volume 1

pg 227 Older (age 9?) children should practice reading aloud every day, and their readings "should include a good deal of poetry, to accustom him to the delicate rendering of shades of meaning, and especially to make him aware that words are beautiful in themselves, that they are a source of pleasure, and are worthy of our honour; and that a beautiful word deserves to be beautifully said, with a certain roundness of tone and precision of utterance. Quite young children are open to this sort of teaching, conveyed, not in a lesson, but by a word now and then."

from volume 2

pg 141
"Heroic poetry contains such inspiration to noble living as is hardly to be found elsewhere." This would include Homer and Beowulf.

pg 263
What kind of poems should be selected for our children? "
They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake's 'songs of Innocence' represent their standard in poetry; De Foe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature--that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life."

from volume 3

pg 121
I saw it stated the other day that children do not care for poetry, that a stirring narrative in verse is much more to their taste. They do like the tale, no doubt, but poetry appeals to them on other grounds, and Shelley's Skylark will hold a child entranced sooner than any moving anecdote.

from volume 4

Book 2 pg 10: "A thousand thoughts that burn come to us on the wings of verse."

pg 70
"our way to an instructed conscience is to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. We must read novels, history, poetry, and whatever falls under the head of literature, not for our own 'culture.'"

pg 71
"Poetry is, perhaps, the most searching and intimate of our teachers. To know about such a poet and his works may be interesting, as it is to know about repousse work; but in the latter case we must know how to use the tools before we get joy and service out of the art. Poetry, too, supplies us with tools for the modelling of our lives, and the use of these we must get at for ourselves. The line that strikes us as we read, that recurs, that we murmur over at odd moments--this is the line that influences our living, if it speak only--

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."

"A couplet such as this, though it appear to carry no moral weight, instructs our conscience more effectually than many wise saws. As we 'inwardly digest,' reverence comes to us unawares, gentleness, a wistful tenderness towards the past, a sense of continuance, and of a part to play that shall not be loud and discordant, but of a piece with the whole. This is one of the 'lessons never learned in schools' which comes to each of us only as we discover it for ourselves.

"Many have a favourite poet for a year or two, to be discarded for another and another. Some are happy enough to find the poet of their lifetime in Spenser, Wordsworth, Browning, for example; but, whether it be for a year or a life, let us mark as we read, let us learn and inwardly digest. Note how good this last word is. What we digest we assimilate, take into ourselves, so that it is part and parcel of us, and no longer separable.

"We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters, the multitude of delightful persons with whom he makes us so intimate that afterwards, in fiction or in fact, we say, 'She is another Jessica,' and 'That dear girl is a Miranda'; 'She is a Cordelia to her father,' and, such a figure in history, 'a base lago.' To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life."

volume 5

pg 224: POETRY AS A MEANS OF CULTURE

"Poetry takes first rank as a means of intellectual culture. Goethe tells us that we ought to see a good picture, hear good music, and read some good poetry every day; and, certainly, a little poetry should form part of the evening lecture. "Collections" of poems are to be eschewed; but some one poet should have at least a year to himself, that he may have time to do what is in him towards cultivating the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the generous heart.

"Scott, of course, here as before, opens the ball, if only for the chivalry, the youthful enthusiasm of his verse. Then, there is always a stirring story in the poem, which is a recommendation to the young reader. Cowper, who does not tell many stories, is read with pleasure by boys and girls almost as soon as they begin to care for Scott; the careful, truthful word-painting of The Task, unobscured by poetic fancies, appears to suit the matter-of-fact young mind. It is pleasant, too, to know poetry which there are frequent opportunities of verifying:--

"Now from the roost, or from the neighb'ring pale,
Come trooping, at the housewife's well-known call,
The feather'd tribes domestic:"--

who that has ever been in the country has not seen that? Goldsmith, and some others, take their places beside Cowper, to be read or not, as occasion offers. It is doubtful if Milton, sublime as he is, is so serviceable for the culture of the "unlearned and ignorant" as are some less distinguished poets; he gets out of reach, into regions of scholarship and fancy, where these fail to follow. Nevertheless, Milton must be duly read; the effort to follow his "high themes" is culture in itself. Also, "Christopher North" is right; good music and fine poetry need not be understood to be enjoyed:--

Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel:"--

the youth who carries about with him such melodious cadences will not readily be taken with tinsel. The epithets of Lycidas alone are an education of the poetic sense.

"Many of us will feel that Wordsworth is the poet to read, and grow thereby. He, almost more than any other English poet of the last century, has proved himself a power, and a power for good, making for whatever is true, pure, simple, teachable; for what is supersensuous, at any rate, if not spiritual.

"The adventures of Una and her tardy, finally victorious knight offer great food for the imagination, lofty teaching, and fine culture of the poetic sense. It is a misfortune to grow up without having read and dreamt over the Faerie Queene.

"There is no space to glance at even the few poets each of whom should have his share in the work of cultivating the mind. After the ploughing and harrowing, the seed will be appropriated by a process of natural selection; this poet will draw disciples here, that, elsewhere; but it is the part of parents to bring the minds of their children under the influence of the highest, purest poetic thought we have. As for Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and others of the "lords of language," it may be well to let them wait this same process of selection.

"And Shakespeare? He, indeed, is not to be classed, and timed, and treated as one amongst others,--he, who might well be the daily bread of the intellectual life; Shakespeare is not to be studied in a year; he is to be read continuously throughout life, from ten years old and onwards. But a child of ten cannot understand Shakespeare. No; but can a man of fifty? Is not our great poet rather an ample feast of which every one takes according to his needs, and leaves what he has no stomach for? A little girl of nine said to me the other day that she had only read one play of Shakespeare's through, and that was A Midsummer Night's Dream. She did not understand the play, of course, but she must have found enough to amuse and interest her. How would it be to have a monthly reading of Shakespeare--a play, to be read in character, and continued for two or three evenings until it is finished? The Shakespeare evening would come to be looked on as a family festa; and the plays, read again and again, year after year, would yield more at each reading, and would leave behind in the end rich deposits of wisdom.

"It is unnecessary to say a word about the great later poets, Browning, Tennyson, and whoever else stands out from the crowd; each will secure his own following of young disciples from amongst those who have had the poetic taste developed; and to develop this appreciative power, rather than to direct its use, is the business of the parents.

"So much for the evening readings, which will in themselves carry on the intellectual culture we have in view: given, the right book, family sympathy in the reading of it, and easy talk about it, and the rest will take care of itself.

"The evening readings should be entertaining, and not of a kind to demand severe mental effort; but the long holidays are too long for mere intellectual dawdling. Every Christmas and summer vacation should be marked by the family reading of some great work of literary renown, whether of history, or purely of belles lettres. The daily reading and discussion of one such work will give meaning and coherence to the history "grind" of the school, will keep up a state of mental activity, and will add zest to the general play and leisure of the holidays.

"Yet be it confessed, that in the matter of reading, this sort of spoon-feeding is not the best thing, after all. Far better would it be that the young people should seek out their own pastures, the parents doing no more than keep a judicious eye upon their rovings. But the fact is, young people are so taken up with living, that, as a rule, they do not read nowadays; and it is possible that a course of spoon-meat may help them over an era of feeble digestive power, and put them in the way of finding their proper intellectual nourishment."

Beeching gave these purposes for teaching poetry:
1. To make us more aware and alert to the beauty of nature around us.
2. The visual imagery they paint in our minds sticks in our memory better than facts; it leaves more of an impression.
3. To enrich our lives and increase our enjoyment of life by sharpening our emotions.
Therefore, poems should be selected that are enjoyable--don't use poetry as a way to sneak in facts to be memorized. (Could this mean that those sing-songs tapes for learning multiplication and state capitals aren't a good idea?) Children's poetry should also be appropriate for their age. They need poems with obvious rhymes. They aren't ready for Milton, but they can enjoy William Blake. But that doesn't mean they should read silly nonsense poems. Poetry needs to teach the rhythym of language, beauty, joy and reverence. Beeching says that ridiculous limericks are 'trifling' and 'profane.' And he says that CM agreed. Mother Goose, Robert Louis Stevenson or Longfellow would be a much better choice. He suggests Lang's Blue Poetry Book.

Simpson says that poems for children must interest them and appeal to their imaginations. Their lifelong tastes in literature are developed while they're young, and we need to make the most of the window of opportunity to train them to love really good poetry. Don't waste it by reading them moral stories written in bad verse. Adults keep offering children doggerel, but she insists that 'surely in all our rich and varied literature we can find simple little poems, tender and dainty, which will appeal just as much to the little reader.' She offers many suggestions in her article.